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Google wants you to turn on email and push notifications for your favorite Google+ circles

In October last year, Google SVP Vic Gundotra announced that Google+ now had 540 million monthly active users. An impressive milestone, although only 300 million of those were accessing the stream and reading content posted by other users. Google+ has long been described as a “ghost town” and it would seem that Google is struggling to grow user engagement.

To that end, Google is trying to remind users of its fledgling social network and encourage them to engage with posts on Google+ through the use of notifications. While this has been a feature for some time – users can opt to receive an email or push notification for individual circles – Google has started displaying a new landing page:

By switching notifications on for their favorite circles, users are reminded that the service exists and that potentially interesting and relevant content is being posted there on a regular basis. If Google can persuade users to click or tap through to a Google+ post this way, they stand a much better chance of growing the number of active users visiting the stream.

Nick Summers is a technology journalist for The Next Web. He writes on all sorts of topics, although he has a passion for gadgets, apps and video games in particular. You can reach him on Twitter, circle him on Google+ and connect with him on LinkedIn.